Ch05: Footnotes
Public Transport
Social Exclusion
Loss of Function
Riches To Rags
Halved Food Costs
Luxury/Necessity
No Maintenance
Domestic Finances
Family Profile
Tools of My Trade
Costs of Education
Destitution's Door
Keeping Warm
Tax Figures
Clothing one's family from a welfare budget, in an expensive region, is hard enough without having to battle against corporate merchandising. This deliberate social manipulation by profiteering corporates multiplies the hardship of those whom market forces place in such circumstances.
Clothing that is specifically for school is by no means the whole of our sons' clothing needs. Vests and underpants, jeans, wool sweater, pyjamas, anorak, casual trousers, track suit and trainers also have to be bought.
However, we cannot clothe them in second hand things from charity shops in a social environment in which their peers are predominantly from yuppie homes. They would be quickly singled out as being different and odd. This would lead to social exclusion. This, in turn, would be emotionally damaging during their most formative years. The resulting psychological damage would be permanent.
This problem is exacerbated by capitalist merchandisers who prey ruthlessly upon a child's need to belong. All the kids at school wear T-shirts and sweaters with current TV characters and labels on them. Naturally, these carry a royalty overhead in their retail prices. Any who are not attired in the latest such fashion are not part of the group. They are rejected and excluded. They cannot take part in the childhood re-enactments of their merchandised TV heroes. They are out of the conversations.
Despite this overwhelming commercial pressure, we managed to restrict the cost of the non-school clothes for our two sons to £202.94 over the year 1993-94. That is roughly £101.47 each. Nevertheless, to achieve this, our sons' non-school clothes, operational necessities and maintenance budgets all had to be shaved raw.
Nowadays, my wife and I never buy clothes until the ones we have are literally falling apart. But they eventually do. Then we buy what is cheap and functional. For this we budgeted £150 between us for the year 1993-94. My wife and I have had two new sets of sheets for our bed in 27 years. We still use the eiderdown and blankets we had as wedding presents. We spent £43.96 in the year 1993-94 on replacing bed linen. We therefore budget £50 a year for this.
| Children's Non-school Clothing | £202.94 |
| Parents' clothing | £150.00 |
| Bed + other household linen | £50.00 |
| Total | £402.94 |
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